ADDITIONAL VIEWS OF JENNIFER DUNN

The joint statement by the members of the minority party lists the many substantive reasons for being sorely disappointed in the report of the House Subcommittee. I voted against forwarding the subcommittee report to the House because I believe we have missed a grand opportunity given us by a concerned public to reform the Congress so that it provides greater deliberation in its process, more fairness to the minority and more accountability to the taxpayers.

Beyond those many reasons, however, there is an overriding shortcoming that dictated my vote: the subcommittee report includes little or no effort to open up the process to the People.

At a time when the American people hold the Congress in dangerously low esteem and when the Congress is increasing it's partisanship rather than decreasing it, there was one imperative for this Joint Committee: make the system more open, more accessible and more understandable.

A freshman class of Members of diverse philosophies came to their House service with that imperative in mind. From both sides of the aisle, freshman class members have worked tirelessly to open up the process of the House and let the sun shine in. Those efforts have included greater public disclosure on gifts to Members and abolishing the unnecessary secrecy of the discharge petition process. Freshman have also played a key role in helping to achieve procedural victories over some of the most restrictive rules in the House out of a desire to open up legislation for further discussion and debate.

Why is the freshman zeal for more openness so great? Because freshmen Members, perhaps more than their colleagues, had it seared into their minds as they campaigned for office amidst a frustrated and cynical electorate: our constituents want an end to costly deals cut behind closed doors.

Freshmen believe that if we do not move now to arrest that cynicism through openness, the institution and the Nation will suffer for it.

And how did this special reform committee do when it came to the fundamental issue of openness? It fell far short of the goal.

Granted, a recommendation was included to disclose more information on appropriation bills. If that proposal is ever enacted, it would begin to open the process. But there were more fundamental and far-reaching ways to address public suspicions and fears, and those were consistently rejected on straight party-line votes.

A case in point is the confusing committee process. We could have attempted to make it more understandable to the taxpayers we serve. That would have pleased the taxpayer, and angered some committee chairs. The committee sided with the handful of committee chairmen.

In addition, we could have allowed a substitute rule to be offered on most legislation. This would `have addressed the rising partisanship and rancor that riddles the House and likewise would have had the salutary effect of providing incentive to the majority party to favor openness over restriction. Again, a party-line vote defeated that notion.

We could have limited the years any single member can serve as a committee chairman. The public would rightly have seen this as a move toward openness and against entrenched powers and embedded staff that often have more power than elected Representatives. This, too, was rejected on a party-line vote.

Finally, and most important both symbolically and substantively, would have been a move to require the House to operate under an open meetings ``sunshine law'' of the type that many state legislatures embrace. Some argue that most committee meetings are open to the press and public. Like many other excuses, that is a smokescreen. In reality, many crucial committee hearings lock the taxpayer out of the very process they fund, and dismiss the press from a democratic process over which they are to serve as the public's vigilant watchdog, for no reason other than that some Members prefer to do the public's business in private.

The public knows this is happening and they do not approve. Yet, on a party-line vote, the majority party chose to continue allowing committee hearings to exclude the public and the press. Taxpayers have every right to be frustrated and cynical when chairmen of committees that write tax and spending bills are allowed to close the doors to the very citizens they represent and write laws in secret that will eventually affect all Americans.

This Joint Committee, even after it quit operating jointly, provided the House with an opportunity to open the process, in order to assure taxpayers that laws can be made in the bright light of public view and to reverse the corrosive partisanship at work in the House. We did neither of these things.

I am committed to joining with other freshmen to work for an open rule if and when this report finds its way to the House floor. Then, a bipartisan majority in the House will have the opportunity to work its will to open the processes of the House and debate those reforms for which the American people have asked.

Jennifer Dunn.